Newcastle
Hospital's Security and Access Management with Imprivata
Imprivata®,
Inc., the converged identity and access management appliance company,
has announced that Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
has chosen Imprivata OneSign to provide strong authentication and single
sign-on (SSO) for the Trust’s 11,000 clinical and administrative
staff, improving productivity and removing password management issues.
OneSign will also integrate with the Trust’s building access systems
allowing them to create and enforce a single security policy for both
IT network and physical access.
As part of its substantial construction and modernisation project, the
Trust is implementing new building access control and physical security
systems from Honeywell at its three sites across the city. Working with
partner BMS, Imprivata OneSign was selected for its ability to implement
an identity management system that links to the physical network and enforces
security policy across the Trust’s computing assets.
'The Trust was looking to consolidate its physical and network security
systems and reduce its management overhead. Before Imprivata, each user
would have carried around up to three separate smart cards in order to
gain access to IT and building resources. In turn, this meant our helpdesk
was also having to deal with large numbers of password reset requests:
about 55 percent of all calls through were password-related,' explained
Michael Mythen, acting deputy head of IM&T, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals
NHS Foundation Trust. 'Using OneSign, staff will only have to use one
card for all their access needs with only one associated password.'
Following a pilot phase in January and February 2008, the Trust is beginning
its roll-out of SSO http://www.imprivata.com/onesign_sso
and strong authentication with a new application for the Maternity department
in March 2008, covering 350 users. 'We expect to reduce the volume of
password reset requests by around 90 percent, as well as improving staff
productivity levels. This project is proving to be popular so far with
both the IT help-desk team and the general user population,' continued
Mythen.
The strong authentication http://www.imprivata.com/strong_authentication
factors to be used are combined in a single card with both chip and pin
and proximity functionality, so that once users are authenticated, they
will automatically be granted access to the applications they are allowed
to use. Further groups of employees will join this system as more applications
become enabled for SSO, with the whole user population to be enrolled
by the end of 2008.
Imprivata OneSign is fully integrated with both the National Health Service
smart card and the Trust’s planned physical access solution from
Honeywell. By linking these systems together, the Trust can create and
apply one single policy across all its access points, whether these are
physical entrances or endpoints on the IT network. This single policy
is far easier for the Trust to manage, while it also means that the organisation
can build up a complete picture of user activity across both physical
and network resources.
'This deployment of SSO and strong authentication is one of the largest
in the UK health sector, and it has demonstrated how local needs can be
met using innovative approaches linked to the Connecting for Health national
scheme. Reducing the number of credentials that users have to remember,
whether these are passwords for applications or carrying multiple smart
cards, makes staff more productive and cuts the burden on the IT team
that has to support these systems,' commented Omar Hussain, CEO, Imprivata.
'Creating and enforcing a single security policy across all the Trust’s
assets means that management is simpler and auditing of access is much
easier. This implementation is a good demonstration of the value that
Imprivata can deliver to organisations in the UK health sector.'
Web: http://www.imprivata.com
Web: http://www.bms-it.co.uk
